Prof. Olga Gershenson Joins IIJS for a Virtual Book Talk, "New Israeli Horror: Local Cinema, Global Genre"

Olga Gershenson (University of Massachusetts Amherst) joined IIJS on Monday, November 25, via Zoom to discuss her latest book, New Israeli Horror: Local Cinema, Global Genre, with IIJS Film Programmer, Stuart Weinstock.

Before 2010, there were no Israeli horror films. The next decade saw a blossoming of the genre by young Israeli filmmakers. New Israeli Horror is the first book to tell their story and analyze their films, from inception to reception. What triggered this sudden development? Why did Israeli filmmakers turn to horror? How do their films portray Israel? What kind of horror scenarios do they depict and how? These questions are particularly poignant now, in light of the attack on October 7, which pitted the real-life horrors against the fictional ones. This talk will include clips from relevant films. No advance viewing is required.

Olga Gershenson is Professor of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies and of Film Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. A multi-disciplinary scholar, her interests lie at the intersection of culture, history, and film. She is the author of New Israeli Horror: Local Cinema, Global Genre (2023), The Phantom Holocaust: Soviet Cinema and Jewish Catastrophe (2013), Gesher: Russian Theater in Israel (2005), as well as editor of Ladies and Gents: Public Toilets and Gender (2009). She is currently working on a volume titled The Oxford Handbook of Judaism and Film.

The lecture is available to view in full below.

This event was made possible by the generosity of the Radov and Kaye families.

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Prof. Magda Teter joined the IIJS for the 2024 Yosef Yerushalmi Annual Memorial Lectur

The Institute welcomed Prof. Magda Teter on Wednesday, November 20, at 6:00 PM for the 2025 Yosef Yerushalmi Annual Memorial Lecture, “On Jewish Suffering, Jewish History, and the Need to Rethink Antisemitism."

In 2022, graffiti was found in Bethesda, MD., saying, “No Mercy for Jews.” Since October 7th, outbreaks of virulent antisemitism, contempt, and lack of empathy for Jewish suffering have been manifest widely. In this talk, Magda Teter will explore the deep habits of thinking about Jews and traditional scholarly approaches to antisemitism, and seek to reframe our understanding of anti-Jewish animus and antisemitism.

Magda Teter is Professor of History and the Shvidler Chair of Judaic Studies at Fordham University. Teter is the author of Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland (Cambridge, 2005), Sinners on Trial (Harvard, 2011), which was a finalist for the Jordan Schnitzer Prize, Blood Libel: On the Trail of An Antisemitic Myth (Harvard, 2020), Christian Supremacy: Reckoning with the Roots of Antisemitism and Racism (Princeton, 2023), and of dozens of articles in English, Hebrew, Italian, and Polish. Her book Blood Libel won the 2020 National Jewish Book Award, The George L. Mosse Prize from the American Historical Association, and the Bainton Prize from the Sixteenth Century Society. Teter is the recipient of prestigious fellowships, including from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University, the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and the NEH. She has served as the co-editor of the AJS Review and as the Vice-President for Publications of the Association for Jewish Studies. Teter is currently the President of the American Academy for Jewish Research.

The lecture is available to view in full below.

This event was made possible by the generosity of the Knapp and Kaye families.

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Dr. Benjamin Berman-Gladstone Delivers the Warren and Susan Stern Postdoctoral Fellowship Lecture

The Institute was proud to host the Warren and Susan Stern Postdoctoral Lecture, “Zionist Thought and the Jewish World: Identity, Gender, and Power Across and Beyond Southwest Asia” with Dr. Benjamin Berman-Gladstone on Thursday, November 14, at 12:00 PM.

“Zionism” is often defined in a vacuum, sometimes (especially by its advocates) as a national liberation movement, and sometimes (especially by its opponents) as a colonial plot. In this lecture, Dr. Gladstone will argue for a history of Zionism not as an abstraction but as a social and intellectual movement embedded in myriad cultural and political contexts across Southwest Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Zionist thought has rarely been reducible to a concrete/static set of principles. Rather, it has operated as a network of overlapping institutions and initiatives or as a space of contestation over issues like labor, gender, culture, and colonialism. By understanding the fragmented and complex development of Zionism across the Jewish world before and since 1948, we can better understand not only its roles in Jewish history but also its manifestations inside and outside Israeli society today.

Benjamin Berman-Gladstone (B.A. Brown University; Ph.D. New York University) is the Warren and Susan Stern Postdoctoral Fellow in Jewish Thought at Columbia University. He was previously a Fulbright Research Fellow in Israel and a Wexner Graduate Fellow. He specializes in Middle Eastern Zionist thought, Middle Eastern Jewish migration history, and Adeni history. His dissertation, completed in 2024, focused on colonialism and resistance in the Aden protectorates, Adeni Jewish political activism and migration from Aden and Yemen to Israel, and enslavement and the slave trade in the Eastern Aden Protectorate (in its Red Sea and Indian Ocean contexts) in the 1930s and 1940s.

The lecture is available to view in full below.

This event was made possible by the generosity of the Stern and Kaye families.

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Yosefa Raz launches her new book, "The Poetics of Prophecy: Modern Afterlives of a Biblical Tradition"

The Institute hosted Yosefa Raz (University of Haifa) on Tuesday, October 29th, for the launch of her new book, The Poetics of Prophecy: Modern Afterlives of a Biblical Tradition.

Since the mid-1700s, poets and scholars have been deeply entangled in the project of reinventing prophecy. Moving between literary and biblical studies, The Poetics of Prophecy reveals how Romantic poetry is linked to modern biblical scholarship’s development. On the one hand, scholars, intellectuals, and artists discovered models of strong prophecy in biblical texts, shoring up aesthetic and nationalist ideals, while on the other, poets drew upon a countertradition of destabilizing, indeterminate, weak prophetic power. Yosefa Raz considers British and German Romanticism alongside their margins, incorporating Hebrew literature written at the turn of the twentieth century in the Russian Empire. Ultimately, she explains the weakness of modern poet-prophets not only as a crisis of secularism but also, strikingly, as part of the instability of the biblical text itself.

Yosefa Raz is a senior lecturer in the department of English Literature at the University of Haifa, where she specializes in the study of the Bible and its reception, poetry and poetics, and Romantic and contemporary poetry. She is also a poet and translator, with work recently published in The Brooklyn Rail, Boston Review, and The Los Angeles Review of Books.

The book talk is available to view in full below.

This event was made possible by the generosity of the Appel and Kaye families.

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"Women on the Yiddish Stage": A Book Talk with Co-Editor Amanda Miryem-Khaye Seigel and Contributor Caraid O'Brien

On Monday, October 28, at 6:00 PM, IIJS hosted a book talk and discussion on Women on the Yiddish Stage with Amanda Miryem-Khaye Seigel, co-editor, and Caraid O’Brien, contributing author.

The integration of women into public Jewish performance (Yiddish-language theater by 1877 and Hebrew-language theater by about 1918) was a revolution in modern Jewish culture. While a great deal of seasoned Yiddish-speaking male talent preexisted theater in the form of cantors, choristers, and tavern singers, East European Jewish women had no experience participating in public Jewish performance. From the theater’s first days, women assumed positions of authority, security, and visibility in great numbers. Rapidly, by the 1890s, when the center of the Yiddish theater shifted from cities throughout Romania and the Russian Empire where it first launched in the late 1870s to cities across the globe — including London, Buenos Aires, and New York City by the turn of the century — substantial numbers of female Yiddish actors enjoyed celebrity on par with their male counterparts. Women on the Yiddish Stage presents an array of scholarly essays that challenge the existing historical accounting of the modern Yiddish theater; highlight pioneering artists, creators, and impresarios; and map sources and methodologies of this rich area of forgotten history.

Amanda Miryem-Khaye Seigel is a Yiddish singer, songwriter, actor, recording artist and scholar in Yiddish music and culture who “exemplifies the attempt to bring a centuries-old language and culture into the contemporary world” (New York Times). She has performed internationally and released a CD of original and adapted Yiddish songs called "Toyznt tamen=A thousand flavors" in 2015. Miryem-Khaye is co-editor (with Alyssa Quint) of Women on the Yiddish Stage (Legenda, 2023) and a member of the Digital Yiddish Theatre Project. Visit http://www.memkhes.com for more information.

Caraid O'Brien has been translating and performing the plays of Sholem Asch since her debut production of God of Vengeance "set Show World aflame" according to the Village Voice in 1999.  She has received three new play commissions from the Foundation for Jewish Culture and was commissioned by Theater J and Solas Nua in DC to write The Rabbi's House, her adaptation of Sholem Asch's Ibsen inspired drama Rabbi Doctor Silver.  She was a 2019 Translation Fellow at the Yiddish Book Center and Sholem Asch Underworld Trilogy, her translation of three Asch plays was published by White Goat Press. Caraid co-curated the theater section of Yiddish: A Global Culture, the permanent exhibit at the Yiddish Book Center and studied Yiddish theater history and performance with legendary Yiddish actors Luba Kadison and Seymour Rexite.   caraidobrien.com.

The lecture is available to view in full below.
*Please note that the audio of Miriam Kressyn’s rendition of Leonard Bernstein’s “Maria,” played during Caraid O’Brien’s lecture, is not currently available.

This event was made possible by the generosity of the Radov and Kaye families.

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Jewish Studies Professors discuss "Framing October 7: A Date of Inflection for Jewish History"

The Institute hosted a panel discussion led by IIJS Co-Director Rebecca Kobrin and featuring Professor Arnie Eisen of the Jewish Theological Seminary, Professor David Feldman of Birkbeck, University of London, Professor Susannah Heschel of Dartmouth College, and Professor Derek Penslar of Harvard University on Tuesday, October 8, 2024.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas invaded Israel and perpetrated the most deadly assault on Jews since the Holocaust.  This attack upended many assumptions both scholars and the public held about Jewish sovereignty, security, and politics.  The activism and protests that exploded throughout the world in the aftermath of this attack raised questions about antisemitism and Israel's place in the world.

Now that a year has passed, scholars must begin to frame and analyze all that took place on and since October 7 within the broader scope of Jewish history.  What are the best frameworks through which to think about, conceptualize, and narrate the events of the past year?  What will this date signify for Jewish history in the future?  Should October 7 be considered a turning point in Jewish history? 

Rebecca Kobrin is the Russell and Bettina Knapp Associate Professor of American Jewish History at Columbia University, specializing in modern Jewish migration, immigration history, urban studies, and business history. She earned her B.A. from Yale and her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, followed by postdoctoral fellowships at Yale and NYU. Kobrin is the author of Jewish Bialystok and Its Diaspora, which won the Jordan Schnitzer Prize, and has edited several volumes, including Chosen Capital and Salo Baron. Her forthcoming book, A Credit to the Nation (Harvard University Press, 2024), explores the world of East European immigrant bankers in America. She has received Columbia’s Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award for her exceptional teaching and mentoring and is a principal investigator of the award-winning Historical NYC Project, a digital humanities initiative mapping New York City’s demographic shifts from 1850 to 1940.

Arnie Eisen is Chancellor Emeritus and Professor of Jewish Thought at The Jewish Theological Seminary. He is a leading authority on American Judaism, and has made significant contributions to Jewish thought and education. Serving as JTS chancellor from 2007 to 2020, he transformed the training of Jewish leaders, emphasizing innovation and authenticity in Jewish life during times of rapid change. Eisen spearheaded the development of JTS’s 21st Century Campus and launched initiatives to expand access to Jewish learning through online resources, public courses, and digitization of JTS’s library. His scholarship includes Galut and Rethinking Modern Judaism, and he has taught at Stanford, Tel Aviv, and Columbia universities. Eisen also serves on advisory boards for the Tanenbaum Center, Covenant Foundation, and Taube Foundation for Jewish Life and Culture.

David Feldman is Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism and a Professor of History, specializing in the history of antisemitism, Jewish history, racialization, and migration in modern Britain. Since joining Birkbeck in 1994, he has been actively engaged in research which addresses public policy, leading a pan-European project on contemporary antisemitism in Western Europe. Feldman has advised institutions such as the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and Human Rights Watch, as well as UK bodies like the All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism. His writings on antisemitism have appeared in publications including The Guardian, Financial Times, and Haaretz. His latest book, co-edited with Marc Volovici, is Antisemitism, Islamophobia and the Politics of Definition (2023).

Susannah Heschel is the Eli M. Black Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College, where she chairs the Jewish Studies Program and is a faculty member in the Religion Department. Her scholarship focuses on 19th- and 20th-century Jewish and Protestant thought, the history of biblical scholarship, Jewish scholarship on Islam, and the history of antisemitism. Among her many publications are Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus, which won a National Jewish Book Award, and The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany. She has a forthcoming book, co-written with Sarah Imhoff, The Woman Question in Jewish Studies with Princeton University Press. Heschel has held visiting professorships at the Universities of Frankfurt, Cape Town, and Princeton. Heschel has been honored with five honorary doctorates and the Mendelssohn Prize of the Leo Baeck Institute. Currently, she is a Guggenheim Fellow and is writing a book on European Jewish scholarship on Islam and serves on the academic advisory council of the Center for Jewish Studies in Berlin and the Board of Trustees of Trinity College.

Derek Penslar is the William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History at Harvard University. He is the director of undergraduate studies within the history department and directs Harvard’s Center for Jewish Studies. Penslar is a resident faculty member at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies (CES) and is also affiliated with Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Penslar takes a comparative and transnational approach to modern Jewish history, which he studies within the contexts of modern nationalism, capitalism, and colonialism. His books have engaged with a variety of approaches and methods, including the history of science and technology, economic history, military history, biography, and the history of emotions. Penslar is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the American Academy for Jewish Research and is an honorary fellow of St. Anne’s College, University of Oxford.

Click on the panelists’ names to read their full remarks.

Arnie Eisen
David Feldman
Susannah Heschel
Derek Penslar
Rebecca Kobrin

The panel is available to view in full below.

This event was made possible by the generosity of the Radov and Kaye families.

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Professor Robin Judd discusses her book, "Between Two Worlds: Jewish War Brides After The Holocaust"

The Institute was joined by Robin Judd, on Monday, September 23, to discuss her latest book, Between Two Worlds: Jewish War Brides after the Holocaust.

Facing the harrowing task of rebuilding a life in the wake of the Holocaust, many Jewish survivors, community and religious leaders, and Allied soldiers viewed marriage between Jewish women and military personnel as a way to move forward after unspeakable loss. Proponents believed that these unions were more than just a ticket out of war-torn Europe: they would help the Jewish people repopulate after the attempted annihilation of European Jewry.

In Between Two Worlds, Historian Robin Judd, whose grandmother survived the Holocaust and married an American soldier after liberation, introduces us to the Jewish women who lived through genocide and went on to wed American, Canadian, and British military personnel after the war. She offers an intimate portrait of how these unions emerged and developed—from meeting and courtship to marriage and immigration to life in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom—and shows how they helped shape the postwar world by touching thousands of lives, including those of the chaplains who officiated their weddings, the Allied authorities whose policy decisions structured the couples' fates, and the bureaucrats involved in immigration and acculturation. The stories Judd tells are at once heartbreaking and restorative, and she vividly captures how the exhilaration of the brides' early romances coexisted with survivor's guilt, grief, and apprehension at the challenges of starting a new life in a new land.

Robin E. Judd is a specialist in Jewish, transnational, and gender history, with particular interests in Holocaust studies, the history of antisemitism, the history of religion, the history of leadership, and the history of migration. She is the author of the award winning Between Two Worlds: Jewish War Brides After the Holocaust (University of North Carolina Press, 2023) and Contested Rituals: Circumcision, Kosher Butchering, and German-Jewish Political Life in Germany, 1843-1933 (Cornell University Press). Between Two Worlds won two National Jewish book awards and was named by the Jewish Women's Archive as one of its Summer 2024 Book Club picks.  

Professor Judd teaches courses on Holocaust studies, modern Jewish history, German history, gender history, and history of migration. Judd recently served as the President of the Association for Jewish Studies; she also serves as the Vice Chair of the Leo Baeck Institute’s Advisory Board, and is on the Hadassah Brandeis Institute’s Academic Review committee, and the Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook’s Editorial Board. Judd has received several fellowships and grants, including an ACLS, Hadassah Brandeis Institute Senior Fellowship Award, an NEH summer stipend, the College of Humanities' Virginia Hull Research Award, and the Coca-Cola Grant for Critical Difference.

The book talk is available to view in full below.

This event was made possible by the generosity of the Radov and Kaye families.

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IIJS Mourns the Loss of Mark Podwal

With profound sorrow, the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies at Columbia University records the death of our dear friend Dr. Mark Podwal. Dr. Podwal was a renowned physician and an artist and illustrator of great wit, insight, and ingenuity. From the introduction to a retrospective volume of his work:
 

“At a point in history when faith in political institutions has been shattered, scholarship grows ever more arcane, when people have lost faith in faith itself, Podwal’s art says: “Let us begin with Aleph-Bet,” and from the primordial building blocks of creation, we can forge a new idiom, one that speaks directly to the imagination and engages the soul. It begins to answer the question of how Jews can create connection in a mechanical age, transcendence in the face of rationalism, and joy in an age of despair. Uncompromising in his remembrance of history’s dark side, Podwal’s art nevertheless seeks beauty, affirmation, and fresh meaning in the treasure houses of ancient lore, a necessary art for the new century.”
 

Mark’s artwork graces our space at Kent Hall, and he recently arranged to donate his papers to the Norman Alexander Library of Jewish Studies at Columbia, ensuring that his place in the history of Jewish art will be treasured and studied for generations to come.


We extend our sincerest condolences to his family, Ayalah, Michael and Ariel.

Plessner Postdoc in Holocaust and Antisemitism Studies, Britt Tevis, explores the roots of Antisemitism in a new podcast series

Antisemitism has deep roots in American history, though it’s often treated as if it were a recent development. Events like the Tree of Life Shooting in Pittsburgh and the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville leave many asking, “Where did this come from?” as if it emerged unexpectedly. Yet, antisemitism in the U.S. has a long and complicated history, one that is easy to overlook.

Britt Tevis, the IIJS 2023-2024 Renee Plessner Postdoctoral Fellow in Holocaust and Antisemitism Studies, serves as the lead scholar for the new podcast series “Antisemitism, U.S.A.”, hosted by Mark Oppenheimer and produced by R2 Studios, part of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. Written by historians John Turner and Lincoln Mullen, the series delves into the deep and often forgotten history of antisemitism in the United States.

Click here to listen and subscribe to the podcast.

Fabio Fantuzzi Joins IIJS to Discuss "Norman Raeben: The Wandering Art, A cultural and artistic itinerary from Sholem Aleichem to Bob Dylan" with Prof. Jeremy Dauber

Fabio Fantuzzi, the Marie Skłodowska Curie Fellow at Columbia University and Ca’ Foscari University, delivered a lecture titled “Norman Raeben: The Wandering Art, A Cultural and Artistic Itinerary from Sholem Aleichem to Bob Dylan” on Thursday, September 12, 2024. The lecture was followed by a discussion with Jeremy Dauber, Atran Professor of Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture, and IIJS Director Emeritus.

Many scholars have underscored the great relevance of artist Norman Raeben’s figure, particularly for his influence on Stella Adler and Bob Dylan’s careers. Yet, due to the scarcity of studies about his oeuvre, his profound impact on prominent Jewish artists and cultural circles in the United States remains largely unknown. Even forty-six years after his death, most of the works and writings of Sholem Aleichem’s last son have yet to be unveiled to the public. The EU-funded POYESIS project, a joint postdoctoral research fellowship between Ca’ Foscari University and Columbia University, is set to illuminate his art, ideas, and legacy, creating a retrospective exhibition of his works, which will open at the Jewish Museum in Venice on November 10, 2024, and providing the first comprehensive catalog of his works. 

In this seminar, Marie Skłodowska Curie Fellow Fabio Fantuzzi discusses the project’s findings with Professor Jeremy Dauber, commenting on various never-before-seen materials. They delve into how Raeben’s art and teaching activity impacted first-, second-, and third-generation Jewish American artists like Stella Adler, Bob Dylan, and Roz Jacobs, offering a unique opportunity to gain deeper insights into the careers of these leading artists and intellectuals.

Fabio Fantuzzi is a Marie Skłodowska Curie Fellow at Columbia University and Ca’ Foscari University, working on the EU-funded MSC project POYESIS (Perspectives on Yiddish Cultural Evolution and Its Legacy: Visual Arts, Theatre, and Songwriting Between Assimilation and Identity. A Case Study).

He holds a Ph.D. in Anglo-American Literature, Culture, and Language, and his primary research interests are the intersections between poetry, music, and visual arts in the American Jewish and Italian American literary and artistic traditions. He has published articles and essays in several academic journals, edited the volume Tales of Unfulfilled Times (Ca’ Foscari University Press, 2017), and co-edited the book Bob Dylan and the Arts: Songs, Film, Painting, and Sculpture in Dylan’s Universe (Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2020). His current research studies the work and teachings of artist Norman Raeben and his influence on various leading artists as a case to examine the evolution of Yiddish culture and art in New York in the 20th century. As part of this research, he is curating a retrospective exhibition of Norman Raeben’s works, which will open at the Jewish Museum in Venice on November 10, 2024, and is editing the catalog of his works.

As a multi-instrumentalist and a songwriter, together with the band Le Ombre di Rosso, he has published the albums “Momenti di lucidità” (2016) and “Da Sponda a Sponda” (2021), which puts to music Luciano Cecchinel’s homonymous collection of poems, which was awarded the 2020 Viareggio-Repaci Prize for Poetry.

The lecture is available to view in full below.

Supported by the generosity of the Appel and Kaye families.

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Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

Michelle Margolis on "Jews at Columbia: The first hundred years (1754 - 1854)"

IIJS’ Norman E. Alexander Librarian for Jewish Studies, Michelle Margolis, chronicled the early history of Jews at Columbia for the University Library page. Her article, “Jews at Columbia: The first hundred years (1754 - 1854), is available online.

Michelle Margolis is the Norman E. Alexander Librarian for Jewish Studies. She is responsible for developing the current library collections, both rare and general, as well as supporting research in Judaic and Israel Studies from around the world and in all languages.  Ms. Margolis is also available to help with any level of questions in research of Judaic or Israel studies.  Michelle represents the library to students and faculty.  

Columbia Libraries’ Judaica collection includes materials from the 10th to the 21st centuries, and represents Jews from across the globe. Columbia’s Judaica manuscript collection is the third largest in the United States.  A 2012 exhibition highlighted some of the most important manuscripts in the collection, and an exhibition in 2016 displayed highlights from Columbia’s Yiddish collection. More information about Judaica in the libraries, including subject specific guides to the collection, can be found here.

Click here to read Michelle Margolis’s article on The Columbia University Libraries page.

Jonathan Dekel of “Checkout” Joins for Q&A to Conclude IIJS Summer Film Series

The IIJS Summer Film Series concluded with Checkout, the Israeli “psychedelic spy comedy” from director and co-writer Jonathan Dekel. Dekel joined us online on Monday, July 15, at 12:00 PM for a virtual Q&A with IIJS Film Programmer Stuart Weinstock.

In this spy comedy, Dov, an aging and feckless Mossad operative, has just been given notice of his mandatory retirement. About to leave his Istanbul hotel on a wave of self-pity, he decides to stay when he identifies an Arabic-speaking traveler as "Gilgamesh," a notorious terrorist. No spoilers: Dov's pursuit of Gilgamesh plays out more like Curb Your Enthusiasm than Fauda. (97 minutes; English, Hebrew, and Arabic with English subtitles)

Jonathan Dekel’s Q&A is available to view in full below.

This event was made possible by the generosity of the Appel and Kaye families.

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IIJS Appoints Associate Director

The Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies is excited to announce that Clémence Boulouque, the Carl and Bernice Witten Associate Professor of Jewish and Israel Studies, has been appointed Associate Director of the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies.

Clémence Boulouque received her Ph.D. in Jewish Studies and History from New York University in 2014 and served as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. Her interests include Jewish thought and mysticism, interreligious encounters, intellectual history and networks with a focus on the modern Mediterranean and Sefardi worlds, as well as the intersection between religion and the arts, and the study of the unconscious.

A graduate of the Institute of Political Sciences in Paris, Prof. Boulouque holds a B.A. in art history and a post-M.A. degree in comparative literature, and she was a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University in the master’s program of the School of International Affairs with a concentration on the Middle East. Prior to resuming her studies at NYU, Prof. Boulouque was a literary and movie critic in Paris. She is a published novelist and essayist in her native France. She published Another Modernity: Elia Benamozegh's Jewish Universalism (Stanford University Press) in 2020 and is the series editor of Stanford University Press’ New Studies in Jewish Mysticism. Her most recent book, Nos apocalypses (Stock essais), or “Our Apocalypses,” a finalist for the 2022 Prix Medicis, surveys religious responses to epidemics and literary descriptions of diseases. The discussions in Nos apocalypses originate from Prof. Boulouque’s innovative undergraduate course “From Exodus to Coronavirus,” which she first taught in 2020.

Prof. Boulouque has been a member of the IIJS faculty since 2015, teaching courses on such varied topics as Kabbalah, the unconscious in Jewish thought, religion in film, European literature, and religion in public life. In her well-loved newest course, she teaches on “Religion and Nasty Women.” We look forward to working with Prof. Boulouque in this new, expanded role.

2024 IIJS Summer Film Series Begins with Erez Tadmor and "Matchmaking"

The IIJS Summer Film Series began this year with “Matchmaking,” the Israeli hit from director and co-writer Erez Tadmor. On Monday, June 17, at 12:00 PM, the Institute hosted a virtual Q&A with the filmmaker and IIJS Film Series Coordinator Stuart Weinstock.

A box office hit in Israel and on the Jewish film festival circuit, Matchmaking tells the comic story of Moti Bernstein, the ideal yeshiva bucher and the perfect match for any Haredi Orthodox bride-to-be. While Moti seems to be on a path towards marriage with an exceptional match, his Ashkenazi world is thrown into turmoil when he falls in love with Nechama, a Mizrahi girl. When the matchmakers of his Haredi community refuse to pair him with Nechama, Moti seeks an unconventional solution to bridge the social gap between them.  (98 minutes; Hebrew with English subtitles)

Erez Tadmor is an Israeli-born filmmaker working across genre lines with diverse short and feature-length films. His internationally-acclaimed films include: A Matter of Size (2009), Magic Men (2014), the Ophir-Award-winning Wounded Land (2015), The Art of Waiting (2019), and Children of Nobody (2022). His 2004 short film, Strangers, won the Audience Award for Short Films at the Sundance Film Festival.

The Q&A with Erez Tadmor is available to view in full below.

This event was made possible by the generosity of the Appel and Kaye families.

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Israeli Organizers Discuss the Democracy Movement Post-October 7 in IIJS Webinar

On April 28, the IIJS hosted a webinar with Dr. Ronit Levine-Schnur (Tel Aviv University) and Shany Granot-Lubaton (NYC Hostages Families Forum), titled “Fighting for Democracy: Reflections on the Israeli Democracy Protest Movement from the Post-October 7 World.”

The past year has been unprecedentedly dramatic and tumultuous for Israeli citizens. Ever since the newly elected far right-wing government declared its plan for a judicial overhaul in January 2023, there have been protests throughout the country—creating the largest protest movement in Israel’s history and one of the most persistent in recent global history—culminating after 9 months with the October 7th attack. With global democratic deterioration, and the upcoming contentious elections in the US, two leading Israeli organizers, Ronit Levine-Schnur and Shany Granot-Lubaton, recount the challenges, successes, and failures of the democratic protest movement, reflect on the impact of October 7th events on the movement, and offer insights on fighting for democracy.

Dr. Ronit Levine-Schnur is a Senior Lecturer at the Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law. She was the co-founder and the leader of “The Israeli Law Professors’ Forum for Democracy” until Oct. 7th. Currently she is a co-leader of “The Day After the War Forum”.

Shany Granot-Lubaton is the leader of the New York City protests for Israeli democracy (the largest protest community outside of Israel). Right after Oct. 7th she co-founded the Hostages Families Forum in NYC. She was previously the chief of staff and spokesperson of the former head of the labor party, MK Shelly Yechimovich and deputy director of the “Darkenu” movement.

The event was organized and moderated by Maya Gayer - Journalist, Fulbright fellow in Public Humanities and MA student in the Oral History Program at Columbia University, who is building an oral history archive of the Israeli democracy protest movement as her thesis project.

This webinar is available to view in full below.

This event was made possible by the generosity of the Radov and Appel families.

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2024 Miron Lecture Investigates "The Place of Hebrew" with Maya Arad and Shachar Pinsker

On Wednesday, April 17, the Institute hosted the Professor Dan Miron Lecture in Hebrew Literature with bestselling Israeli-American author Maya Arad (Stanford University) and Prof. Shachar Pinsker (University of Michigan), who participated in a discussion called “The Place of Hebrew.”

Pinsker and Arad discuss the possibility of writing Hebrew in America, expanding the setting and characters of Hebrew literature beyond Israel. Using the translation of Arad's collection of novellas, The Hebrew Teacher (Translated by Jessica Cohen), which came out last month (New Vessel Press) as an example, they raise the question of the place of Hebrew in today’s Israel, in America, and elsewhere.

Maya Arad is the author of eleven books of Hebrew fiction, as well as studies in literary criticism and linguistics. Born in Israel in 1971, she received a PhD in linguistics from University College London and for the past twenty years has lived in California where she is currently writer in residence at Stanford University’s Taube Center for Jewish Studies. Her most recent book, The Hebrew Teacher, will be released in English translation for the first time on March 19, 2024.

Shachar Pinsker is a Professor of Judaic Studies and Middle East Studies, and Associate Director of the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Jewish Research. His scholarly writings include two award-winning books: Literary Passports: The Making of Modernist Hebrew Fiction in Europe (2011), and A Rich Brew: How Cafés Created Modern Jewish Culture (2018). He is also the editor (with Sheila Jelen) of Hebrew, Gender, and Modernity (2007), Women’s Hebrew Poetry on American Shores (2016), and Where the Sky and the Sea Meet: Israeli Yiddish Stories (2021). He is currently writing a book on Yiddish in Israeli literature, and co-directing the NEH supported research project: The Feuilleton, the Public Sphere, and Modern Jewish Cultures.

Dr. Arad and Prof. Pinsker’s talk is available to view in full below.

This event was made possible by the generosity of the Knapp family.

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Pierre Birnbaum Chronicles American Antisemitism at the 2024 Yerushalmi Lecture

On Thursday, April 11, the IIJS and the Columbia Alliance Program hosted French historian and sociologist Pierre Birnbaum for the 2024 Yosef Yerushalmi Annual Memorial Lecture. Dr. Birnbaum’s talk was titled: “The Vanishing of Hope?”

Pierre Birn­baum is a his­to­ri­an and polit­i­cal soci­ol­o­gist who is pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Paris 1 Pan­théon-Sor­bonne. His books in Eng­lish include Paths of Eman­ci­pa­tion: Jews, States, and Cit­i­zen­ship (coedit­ed with Ira Katznel­son, 1995), Jew­ish Des­tinies: Cit­i­zen­ship, State, and Com­mu­ni­ty in Mod­ern France (2000), The Anti-Semit­ic Moment: A Tour of France in 1898 (2011), and Léon Blum: Prime Min­is­ter, Social­ist, Zion­ist (2015). His most recent book, Tears of His­to­ry: The Rise of Polit­i­cal Anti­semitism in the Unit­ed States, was published by Columbia University Press in 2023.

Dr. Birnbaum’s talk is available to view in full below.

This event was made possible by the generosity of the Knapp and Kaye families.

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Ilan Stavans Delivers 2023-2024 Naomi Prawer Kadar Annual Memorial Lecture

The Israel and Jewish Studies & The Naomi Foundation hosted the 2023-2024 Naomi Prawer Kadar Annual Memorial Lecture on Monday, April 8, at 12:00 PM, with academic and cultural critic Ilan Stavans, a virtual talk titled “Yiddish and Ladino: Forking Paths.”

Yiddish and Ladino have unique histories, each reflecting the sprawling civilizations they fostered. What elements do they share? How do we define their individual character? Was their route foreseeable? At what points have the two intersected and what has come from that encounter? Do the two have the same survivalist spirit? Born and raised in Mexico City in a Yiddishist milieu and among fervent Ladinists, Ilan Stavans reflects on the divergent, at times perplexing, and even tragic routes these two Jewish languages have taken.

Ilan Stavans is Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities, Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College, the publisher of Restless Books, and a consultant to the Oxford English Dictionary. The recipient of numerous international awards and prizes, his books for adults and children include On Borrowed Words, Dictionary Days, Resurrecting Hebrew, How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish, Selected Translations: Poems 2000-2020, and The People's Tongue: Americans and the English Language. He has rendered Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda, and Juan Rulfo into English, Emily Dickinson and Elizabeth Bishop into Spanish, Isaac Bashevis Singer from Yiddish, Juan Gelman from Ladino, Yehuda Halevi and Yehuda Amichai from Hebrew, the Popol Vuh from K'iche',and Don Quixote, Alice and Wonderland and The Little Prince into Spanglish. An essayist, cultural commentator, linguist, translator, and editor, his work, translated into twenty languages, has been adapted into film, theater, TV, radio, and music.

Dr. Stavans’ talk is available to view in full below.

This event was supported by the generosity of the Naomi Foundation.

The Naomi Prawer Kadar Annual Memorial Lecture provides an opportunity for the public to explore topics of Yiddish language and linguistics, the history of Yiddish, Yiddish children’s literature and education. The lecture is supported by the Naomi Prawer Kadar Foundation, Inc., which is dedicated to reimagining education. The Naomi Foundation champions Yiddish, Naomi’s lifelong passion, as a vibrant, rich, and contemporary language. The Naomi Foundation advances the teaching and learning of Yiddish, particularly in academic and scholarly settings.

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An Anthropological Investigation of West Bank Settlers with Amir Reicher

On Wednesday, April 3, the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies hosted a lecture with Amir Reicher (Hebrew University), a recipient of the IIJS’ Kingdon New Voices in Israel and Jewish Studies Award for 2023-2024.

Over the past two decades, the building of “illegal outposts” became the main tool in advancing the West Bank settlement project. Established deep within the territories, the people who live in these outposts—mostly second-generation settlers born in “Judea and Samaria” to parents from the Gush Emunim movement—are considered the most radical and “fundamentalist” within West Bank settlement society. In 2019, Dr. Amir Reicher immersed himself in one of these communities for nearly two years of anthropological research.

In this talk, Dr. Reicher aims to unravel the mindset driving a specific segment of outpost settlers, who, as he shows, diverge from the nationalist-messianic vision of their parents’ generation. Specifically, he demonstrates how through a process of ‘metaphysical detachment,’ these frontier settlers gravitate toward the physical realm in a desperate quest for an existential anchor. Dr. Reicher argues that rather than the abstract and the transcendental what drives these people is a radical turn to the concrete and tangible. In this way, he analyzes how a sense of religious crisis serves to infuse their settler-colonial practices with ever more energy. By tracing this process, Dr. Reicher reflects on contemporary political dynamics unfolding in the West Bank and outlines the emergence of what he sees as a distinct religious modality invented in the outposts.

Dr. Reicher’s lecture is available to view in full below.

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Amir Reicher holds a PhD in Anthropology from the CUNY Graduate Center. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Martin Buber Society of Fellows at the Hebrew University. He is an anthropologist specializing in the anthropology of religion and settler-colonialism. His research is based on almost two years of anthropological fieldwork among West Bank settlers, during which he lived in an illegal outpost settlement in the Judean Desert area. He is currently completing his book manuscript titled Between Two Messiahs, in which he presents a granular account of how the West Bank settlement project expands, as he analyzes the rise of a post-messianic imagination among a specific segment of settlers. In doing so, at the center of his work is an investigation of the unfolding of political violence in the aftermath of messianic and ideological fervor.

This event was made possible by the generosity of Mark Kingdon and Anla Cheng Kingdon, as well as the Radov and Kaye families.

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Kingdon Postdoc Presents Research at IIJS

On March 26, 2024, the Institute hosted a lecture with Rachel Smith, the Mark and Anla Cheng Kingdon Postdoctoral Fellow in Israel and Jewish Studies at Columbia University. Dr. Smith shared some of her ongoing research in a presentation titled “Superstition and the Haunting of Sephardic Modernity.”

This talk examines ethnographic writing about superstition among Sephardic communities of the late Ottoman Empire. Dr. Smith demonstrates how Sephardic reformers deployed the category of superstition in efforts to draw new social and intellectual boundaries that condoned various social groups—including women, the elderly, and traditional rabbis—and the knowledge they held as superstitious. She shows how this was part of a larger political project to assert their newfound authority as an intellectual class at a time of great social, cultural, and political upheaval across the empire.

Rachel Smith is the Mark and Anla Cheng Kingdon Postdoctoral Fellow in Israel and Jewish Studies at Columbia University. Her research examines the history, politics, and ethics of knowledge production and representation among Ottoman Sephardic communities. Against the backdrop of expanding empires, the rise of anthropology, and shifting notions of race, she explores how travelers and teachers, rabbis and journalists produced, circulated, and mobilized ethnographic and racialized knowledge in service of different visions of reform. She earned her PhD in History from the University of California Los Angeles, and holds a BA/MA in Linguistic Anthropology from New York University and a dual-MA in Jewish History and Education from the Jewish Theological Seminary.

Dr. Smith’s talk is available to view in full below.

This event was made possible by the generosity of Mark and Anla Cheng Kingdon and the Kaye family.

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